1. Field of Invention
The invention relates to a BIOS backup method and, in particular, to a backup method for the BIOS of interfaces.
2. Related Art
Nowadays, the use of computer systems has become very popular, not only in businesses but also in general public. One important component in computer systems is the basic input/output system (BIOS), which is a program installed in read-only memory (ROM) and contains many basic subroutines related to input/output (I/O). It is firmware on the mother board (M/B) with certain relations with computer hardware. Arbitrarily changing or modifying the BIOS on the M/B may result in the breakdown of the computer system.
The main function of the BIOS is to control the operations of the central processing unit (CPU) and various chips and the processes on all standard peripheral devices, such as the printer, mouse, keyboard, hard disk drive (HDD), and floppy disk drive (FDD). When the BIOS starts the computer system, it first assures that all interfaces are correctly functioning before loading the operating system (OS) from the HDD or FDD to random access memory (RAM).
Once the BIOS is installed, the OS and application programs do not need to specify detailed information about I/O devices (such as the hardware addresses). If the information is changed, one only needs to change the BIOS, not the OS or individual applications. The BIOS thus plays a very important role here. However, current interfaces in computer systems are installed with their own BIOS. Any error occurring to their BIOS may affect the normal functioning of the interfaces or even the whole computer system. Therefore, we need a method to prevent the errors happening to the interface BIOS from affecting the normal computer operations.